'Runner Development' Benchmarking Georgia HS Boys Cross Country #5

Whereas it is the most important factor in winning a state cross country championship, recruiting freshmen is not the only factor.   The freshmen will need to improve over the next 2-3 years for your team to be competitive.   Of the fifty five boys who were in the top five on state championship teams in 2011 and 2012, more than half started as freshmen.  Their median freshman PR’s were a respectable, but far from fabulous, 18:00. 

 

With many programs, those 18:00 freshmen will never get to 17:00 even if they remain in the program until they are seniors.   With the elite programs, those freshmen will be approaching 16:00 PR’s by the time they are seniors.  

 

The challenge with measuring runner development is creating a metric that works for a 22:00 freshman and a 17:00 freshman.   The 22:00 freshman may improve by a minute or more per year, while the 17:00 freshman might find a 20 second/year improvement as a noteworthy accomplishment.  

 

My solution to this dilemma is to consider 14:30 (870 seconds) as a “perfect” 5k time.  A 22:30 (1350 seconds) could improve 20% and run 20:54 (1254 seconds) as a sophomore [(1350-1254)/(1350-870) = 0.2].   Likewise, the 17:00 freshman would reach 16:30 as a sophomore with that same 20% year over year improvement.  

 

The table below suggests that there is not much correlation between runner development and program success.  After all, the difference between the 12.8% development rate of the also-rans and the 15.5% development rate of the contender and dynasty programs would only make a 10-15 second difference in the senior PR for a 18:00 freshman.   Whereas the 10-15 second per runner difference could account for presence or absence of a trophy by itself, it is only half of the story.  

 

The runner development rate cannot be considered by itself, but rather must be considered in conjunction with the recruitment rate.  Keep in mind that the dynasty and contender programs recruit 7 and 3 times as many runners, respectively, as do the also ran programs.  The numbers in the table below are the average runner development rates.  There is also variation in the development rate, and the standard deviation of the development rate is about 15% (as is the average).  That means that 16% of the runners will not develop at all and that another 16% of the runners will demonstrate a yr/yr development rate in excess of 30%. 

 

If a contender program only gets two good freshmen each year, its top five 2-3 years down the road will include both of those boys, one of whom will develop faster than 15% yr/yr and one of whom will develop slower than that.   The dynasty program, on the other hand, may have five good freshmen.   Two or three years later, their top five will only include the ones that developed faster than 15% yr/yr.  The ones who develop more slowly will most likely be running in the JV race.   The also-ran programs will be compelled to use almost all of their recruits, including those who have developed only a little (or perhaps not at all).  

 

Dynasty programs: 15.2%

Contender programs: 15.7%

Also Ran programs:12.8%

Private benchmark:26.2% (Lakeview Academy)

Public benchmark: 23.3% (Wayne County)